





THE MESSAGE AND 
THE MAN 


BY 


SAMUEL M. ZWEMER, D.D., F.R.G.S. 


CANDIDATE SECRETARY 


STUDENT VOLUNTEER MOVEMENT 


STUDENT VOLUNTEER MOVEMENT 
125 East 27TH STREET 
New York City 


CopyRIGHT, 1909, By 
STUDENT VOLUNTEER MOVEMENT 
FOR ForEIGN Missions 


THE MESSAGE AND THE MAN 


A missionary is not only one who is sent, but 
one who is sent with a message. The true mis- 
sionary must not only have a message but he 
must be the living embodiment of that message 
and the incarnation of the truth which he teaches. 
Like an ambassador at a foreign court, he must 
not only carry credentials from his own govern- 
ment, but he must be loyal to that government 
and represent its ideals and ideas to those to 
whom he goes. The knowledge and experience 
of this truth make the missionary. He stands 
as a witness to the truth which he possesses, and 
proclaims it by his life as well as by his lips. 

If the man who goes out to the Orient has no 
larger and fuller message in regard to God and 
His dealings with men than that already pos- 
sessed by those who ardently believe the non- 
Christian religions, it is perfectly evident that 
when he comes in contact with those to 
whom he is sent the overflow of faith will be 
in the wrong direction; and it is also clear 
that unless he knows by personal experience 
what the Truth can do in the transformation of 
his own character and in conquering his own 


3 


temptations, he cannot help others. The man 
who believes neither in revelation nor inspiration 
and meets a Mohammedan who fully believes 
that God has spoken and that we have His word 
as our sufficient guide to being made whole, is 
looked upon with pity because he has no real 
message to give. The Hindu Pundit would be 
able to demonstrate both the reasonableness and 
the necessity of a divine incarnation to the man 
who denied that it was possible for God to ap- 
pear in the flesh, and even the Buddhist or An- 
imist might contribute some element of religious 
faith to the out and out so-called “Christian 
agnostic.” 

There is some truth in all the non-Christian 
religions, and much good in many of them. No 
one is so ready to admit this as the man who 
knows from his own personal experience the ful! 
power of Christianity. He who knows the 
superiority of what he possesses is never afraid 
of comparisons, but the man without conviction 
has no certain standard by which to test the truth 
of other systems. 

Christianity is the one religion, and its mes- 
sage—Christ Incarnate, Crucified, Risen and 
Glorified—is the one thing needed to evangelize 
the world. Unbelief does not trouble itself by 
confuting any other religion than Christianity. 
We never hear of agostics or skeptics writing 


4 


against Mohammedanism or Buddhism with the 
avowed purpose of proving their falsehood. 
This is a remarkable tribute to the unique char- 
acter of Christianity and indirectly proves that 
its demands are also unique. If a man accepts 
Christianity, he must live according to its teach- 
ings or be accused of hypocrisy, but in other 
religions faith and morality are either loosely 
connected or utterly divorced from each other. 
Because Christianity claims to be the absolute 
religion and affirms that it is a matter of spiritual 
life or death whether men accept it, opponents 
can not leave it alone; they know Christianity 
will not leave them alone. It is this unique char- 
acter of the message that makes the missionary’s 
sphere as universal as the needs of humanity. 
Christians may differ among themselves in 
regard to the interpretation of the non-essentials, 
but in regard to the fundamentals of the Chris- 
tian faith they are agreed. The least common 
denominator of the Gospel as Paul understood it 
is given by him in these words: ‘Now I make 
known unto you, brethren, the Gospel which I 
preached unto you, which also ye _ received, 
wherein also ye stand, by which also ye 
are saved; I make known, I say, in what words 
I preached it unto you, if ye hold it fast, 
except ye believed in vain. For I delivered 
unto you first of all that which I also 


5 


received, how that Christ died for our sins ac- 
cording to the Scriptures; and that He was 
buried, and that He hath been raised on the 
third day according to the Scriptures.” He tells 
the Corinthians that this Gospel is sufficient for 
their salvation. The man who does not hold 
with conviction even this simple statement of the 
faith surely has no message large enough and 
strong enough to warrant a journey to the anti- 
podes. Nor will it profit him to have only an 
intellectual apprehension of these truths. He 
must have a vital experience of their power, or 
his message will be without sincerity and with- 
out spiritual result. 

When the earnest seeker asks ‘“What is Chris- 
tianity?”’ he has a right to an answer that, how- 
ever brief, shall be definite and authoritative, 
and no man is qualified to attempt to answer so 
important a question for the seeker after truth 
unless he himself has tested in his own exper- 
ience the principles of the faith set forth in his 
message. The main source of our knowledge of 
things spiritual is the Bible, and no man can 
give its central message unless he believes it 
true. You cannot read even the first chapter of 
Mark without seeing that it proclaims the super- 
human character of our faith, the deity of Jesus 
Christ and the necessity for the atonement. 
There are some things which are so fundamental 


6 


that to remove them is to overthrow the whole 
superstructure. 

The struggle is an old one. The fight has al- 
ways been against the supernatural claims of 
Christianity. Those who are animated merely 
by the altruistic spirit—the very product of 
Christianity even though they have a Chris- 
tian heritage in Christian lands, want to accept 
the fruit, instead of realizing that the fruit de- 
pends on the root, and this has always resulted 
in a weakening faith and a curtailment or adul- 
teration of the Gospel. 

“In apostolic days,” said the Bishop of Liver- 
pool at the British Student Volunteer Confer- 
ence in 1908, ‘“‘men advocated a Gospel without 
the Cross. But St. Paul would have none of it. 
In the fourth century Arius taught a Christianity 
without a perfectly divine Savior, and the 
Church would not have it. In the fifteenth cen- 
tury the Renaissance intoxicated by the discov- 
ery of Greek and Roman literature, despised 
the ‘jargon of St. Paul’ and would have pagan- 
ized Christianity, but the Reformation brought 
Northern Europe back to the Scriptures and to 
the Christ. Today men are proclaiming a Gos- 
pel without the supernatural. They are asking 
us to be content with a perfect human Christ; 
with a Bethlehem where no miracle was 
wrought; with a Calvary which saw sublime 





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self-sacrifice, but no atonement for sin; with a 
sepulchre from which no angel’s hand rolled 
away the stone. But we must have none of it. 
We will hold fast, we will transmit the faith 
once for all delivered to the saints. We will 
hand down to our children, we will proclaim to 
all the tribes of the earth, Christ Incarnate, 
Atoning, Risen, Ascended, our Intercessor at 
God’s right hand, waiting to come again to judge 
the quick and the dead.” 

The man who thinks he can help evangelize 
the world without faith in Christ and experience 
of His power will disappoint those who send 
him, and will himself regret ever having at- 
tempted to do the work of a missionary. Many 
blighted, disappointed lives are explained by this 
fact. 

Throughout all the East thousands have 
lost faith in their old religions, and are longing 
for guidance, not to new doubts, but to a new 
faith. The spiritual hunger of men in Korea 
will not be satisfied by philanthropic effort for 
their temporal needs. The educated classes in 
Egypt who have lost faith in the Koran as the 
very Word of God will not find rest for their 
souls and help in temptation from those who 
have not tested the truth of the gospel of Christ 
and are prepared to present the living Christ 
with that confidence which is the result of per- 


8 


sonal knowledge of His power to enable men 
to live the victorious life. Men everywhere are 
hungering for the living Christ. 

There is no one who can guide them but the 
man who has that thorough grip on the funda- 
mentals of the Christian faith which comes as a 
result of having experienced its power. 

It is strange that this should not appear axio- 
matic to those who are filled with philanthropic 
love for humanity and think that they can do 
good service on the foreign field. Yet there 
are men who think that they can help evan- 
gelize the world without the message of the Gos- 
pel in their hearts and in their life. A mission- 
ary candidate recently wrote: “I do not feel 
free to force my own individual opinion on my 
fellow man, nor do I think that by proselyting 
the heathen we benefit him. Yet, etc.,’—Such a 
man lacks the qualification of a missionary. The 
missionary does not force his individual opinion 
on any man. His convictions are the product of 
his experience. His experience came when 
Truth made him its captive and its advocate. He 
has a message because he has accepted the 
Truth and his own life has been mastered by its 
power. 

There are also men who think that character 
has little relation to creed, and that the non- 
Christian world will find Jesus Christ without 


9 


the message of the Cross. Such an one recently 
wrote: “I should like to take the position of a 
medical man rather than of a missionary, as I 
am not only not versed along religious lines, but 
am primarily a medical man at heart. I believe 
that character is a more important consideration 
than mere religious belief. I attend church, 
but am not a member, and am thoroughly of the 
‘new school’ in my beliefs concerning the Chris- 
tian faith.” 

There is nothing to prevent a man with an 
altruistic spirit going out to practice medicine 
in a non-Christian country in the same way as 
he practices in this country, namely, at his own 
charges. But it is not reasonable to expect a 
Mission Board, organized for the express pur- 
pose of giving a knowledge of Jesus Christ to 
the non-Christian world, to send him out at 
their expense. 

A medical practitioner, teacher or an engineer 
might do excellent service on the foreign field, 
as well as at home along philanthropic lines, al- 
though the fierce temptations of the Orient and 
the non-Christian atmosphere make it very hard 
for any one not dominated by the life of Christ 
and who has not tested His power to retain moral 
character. 

The non-Christian world, however, needs not 
only medical skill, but the skill of reaching men’s 


1@ 


hearts with a message of hope. The only men 
who have worked modern miracles on the for- 
eign field have been the men with a message. 

This does not mean that the one message is 
not expressed in diverse ways and by every pos- 
sible method. “There are diversities of gifts but 
the same Spirit” uses them to the one end, that 
of bringing men to Christ and Christ into the 
lives of men. “There is only one aim before us 
missionaries,” said Donald Fraser, after experi- 
ence in the heart of Africa to the students at the 
Nashville Student Volunteer Convention, “‘it is 
the presentation of Christ to the world. I do not 
for a moment fancy that such an aim limits in 
any way the methods which we may use. FEvery- 
thing which elevates the social conscience, which 
purifies administration, which sanctifies laws— 
every method of that sort may become an avenue 
to lead to Jesus Christ. But this I say, that these 
things by themselves are useless; that unless 
these avenues lead directly to the living Christ, 
we are only doing a temporal work which will 
not last through the ages. I say, too, that if 
we who lead along these avenues are not to end 
in a maze, we must step side by side with Jesus 
Christ, that the people may at last reach to Him. 
Let me press it. The supreme end of the mis- 
sionary cannot be attained by anything else than 
by spiritual methods, by spiritual ambitions, the 


TI] 


elevation of the human race until it returns to 
God, and the face of God is again formed in 
man.” 

It was Henry Martyn who, when a Mohamme- 
dan was speaking derisively of Christ, said: “TI 
could not endure existence if Christ were not 
glorified. It would be hell for me if He were 
always to be thus dishonored.” Raymund Lull, 
Robert Moffat, James Gilmour, David Living- 
stone, John G. Paton, James Chalmers, Grenfell 
of Labrador, and Grenfell of the Congo, with all 
the other heroes of the Cross, have been able to 
say with the Apostle Paul, “We preach Christ 
crucified.”” Every one of them, however diverse 
in call, talents and environment, attained mis- 
sionary success because they had a message and 
that message the Gospel, which they preached 
not as a theory or creed, but as their very life. 

A man who has mere opinions and no convic- 
tions wrought out in his own life’s experience as 
regards the Christ is a man without a message. 
The man who expects to go out and represent 
Christianity in the non-Christian world must 
carry with him the consciousness of the power 
of Christ enabling him hour by hour to live the 
victorious life. It is the one indispensable part 
of the missionary’s outfit and the one that con- 
vinces the other man of the truth of the message. 

Some years ago a missionary was preaching in 


12 


a hospital. He spoke of the love of Christ and 
endeavored to set forth its length and breadth 
and depth and height, using the words of the 
Apostle as the basis of what he was saying. He 
endeavored to present the subject simply so that 
it could be understood by the uneducated people 
who had gathered in the waiting-room of the 
hospital. 

At the close of the address, a Moslem, unpre- 
possessing in appearance, who had evidently not 
been to the hospital before, stepped forward and 
with Bedouin boldness exclaimed bluntly,—‘T 
understood all you told us, because I have seen 
that sort of a man myself.” 

In the conversation that followed, this man, 
who came from a city about a thousand miles 
distant, began to describe, in response to in- 
quiries, a stranger who had come to his city and 
took up his residence there. The Moslem told 
how he had watched the stranger. 

“Why,” he said, “he was a strange man. When 
people did wrong to him, he did good to them. 
He looked after sick folks and prisoners, and 
everybody who was in trouble. He even treated 
negro slave boys and sick Arabs kindly. He was 
always good to other people. Lots of them never 
had such a friend as he was. He used to take 
long journeys in the broiling sun to help them. 
He seemed to think one man was as good as an- 


13 


other. He was a friend to all kinds of people. 
He was just what you said.” 

It surprised the missionary that this rude 
uneducated man had recognized in the descrip- 
tion which he had given of the love of Christ, 
a Christian missionary; and greater was his 
surprise later to find that it was his own brother 
who some years before had opened a mission 
in that city. That Mohammedan had not 
only heard the message of the missionary, but he 
had seen it exemplified in the missionary’s life. 
What higher tribute could be paid to the daily 
life of one of God’s servants than the fact that 
an ignorant Mohammedan, studying him day by 
day, recognized in his daily life the principles 
of the gospel of Christ! 

The Christian Church has established and sup- 
ported the missionary enterprise to give the non- 
Christian world the Gospel of Christ as it has 
been received and interpreted by that Church. 
Those who do not accept the message, though 
they may call themselves members of a church, 
have nothing to take to the mission field and 
manifestly, instead of representing the Church, 
they mis-represent the church that sends them. 

The Student Volunteer Movement has not 
only emphasized the highest physical and in- 
tellectual qualifications of candidates for mis- 
sionary work, but has also even more strongly 


T4 


insisted that they be spiritually qualified. Only 
spiritual men are a real acquisition and rein- 
forcement in the conduct of a spiritual enter- 
prise. Unless the missionary’s first love is his 
love for Christ crucified and exalted, he will lose 
it, grow lukewarm and finally cold when sur- 
rounded by the atmosphere of heathenism. The 
real missionary spirit is the Holy Spirit. He 
Himself gave us the message in the Scriptures 
and in the Christ enables us to interpret it to 
others. Not until a man’s life has beeen trans- 
formed by the power of the message he goes to 
proclaim is he ready to endure the hardship and 
to be patient under the adversity which is sure 
to be his experience as a missionary. He must 
know that the Christian faith is a reality ; that his 
faith is the “substance of things hoped for, the 
evidence of things not seen.” He believes that 
God has worked miracles in the past and can 
work miracles today. He knows that Christian- 
ity in its origin, history and effect is from first 
to last supernatural. The man who denies its 
supernatural character cannot be a true mis- 
sionary of the Christ, even though he go to the 
mission field. The missionary spirit will not 
abide without the missionary message. The 
giants in faith have been the giants in faithful- 
ness. 


_ 
wn 


Faith of our fathers! living still 
In spite of dungeon, fire and sword; 
O, how our hearts beat high with joy 
Whene’er we hear that glorious word! 
Faith of our fathers! holy faith! 
We will be true to thee till death! 


Our fathers, chained in prisons dark, 
Were still in heart and conscience {frec; 
How sweet would be their children’s fate, 
If they, like them, could die for thee! 
Faith of our fathers! holy faith! 
We will be true to thee till death! 


Faith of our fathers! we will love 
Both friend and foe in all our strife; 
And preach thee, too, as love knows how, 
By kindly words and virtuous life; 
Faith of our fathers! holy faith! 
We will be true to thee till death! 


Frederick W. Faber 








